


Let Your Shadow Fall Behind You

by TheSilverHunt3r



Category: Rebirth - 69Michi (Webcomic)
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23718961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilverHunt3r/pseuds/TheSilverHunt3r
Summary: But what if this time Neo found him? He settled his fingers on the keyboard and carefully entered a name: Noah Collins. AU, oneshot.
Relationships: Neo Collins & Abel Collins, Noah Collins & Abel Collins, Noah Collins & Neo Collins
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	Let Your Shadow Fall Behind You

Summary: But what if this time Neo found him? He settled his fingers on the keyboard and carefully entered a name: Noah Collins. AU, oneshot.

The only things in the hall were broken glass, blood, bodies, and ripped clothing. Those who had managed to come back from the grave were easily dealt with, at least for the zombies not lurking in corners or behind locked doors.

Amidst this scene of carnage stood a teenager with a long coat and black hair. The most notable part of his appearance was the mask covering his mouth and the single red earring he had worn for years. He pulled out a bottle of water and a small solar powered flashlight, seemingly out of thin air. His name was Neo Collins, and the name of the large black beast beside him was Hail.

The electricity was still running, thanks to the ruined military base's backup generator. Lightning was still inconsistent around the place, as some of the light bulbs had been smashed in the chaos.

Neo flicked his flashlight on. He still stumbled at times, and cursed, as he walked through the cluttered hallways. Hail found it easier to navigate, possessing better night-vision than humans. He was on guard now, ready to maul anything that jumped at them.

After pocketing a few key cards and a janitor's key ring he found on the way in, Neo could get to pretty much any part of the facility he wanted. He used the maps on the wall to get to the base's store of food and threw everything in his earring's space dimension without much care. It was always helpful to have more food, and he had been getting low lately.

Seven minutes later, Neo was staring at a door. He didn't have anything that would open the lock, so he simply took part of the door into his earring. Neo turned on the computer in the office of. . .well, he didn't know, whomever was in charge of the base. He sipped at his bottle of water, idly searching for scraps of information on what the government has been up to. Neo has been wandering around, avoiding them, for the past few years. . .since the split. He knew perfectly well what the researchers would do with him.

The teen's fingers tapped the desk for a minute in a rough staccato. The hope in his chest wavered. He would only be hurting himself if he kept obsessing over what happened.

But what if this time Neo found him?

He settled his fingers on the keyboard and carefully entered a name: Noah Collins.

Search.

The document results came up. They were from before Armageddon, back when he ran the Arc Company.

Neo scanned over the titles and dates with bitter disappointment. He got all the way up to the top and. . .choked as he saw that the newest dated file that showed up was several months after Armageddon. It was titled "PROJECT NOAH" in all caps, as most military officials had little sense of style.

Neo clicked on it.

The file opened up to show that. . .the information there was mostly blacked out. The picture was blurred, but it was definitely of Noah Collins. The items confiscated and stored here included his glasses and heart monitor.

Neo's nails dug into the wooden desk. They had taken away his heart monitor? Were they idiots or did they just not give a d*mn if he died?

Neo forcibly relaxed his hand and picked out the wood under his nails before he had to deal with splinters. Infections and diseases of any sort were much more deadly these days, with the public's inability to get professional medical attention.

He turned his attention back to the screen and continued reading. Afterwards, he searched through the base's archives and storage room. Information was his best alley and he doubted he would get a chance like this again.

XXX

Noah was surrounded by zombies. His normally composed expression twisted into fear and pain. He was surrounded in a pool of blood and quickly losing consciousness. Noah was-

Neo closed his eyes, and slapped himself, aware that self inflicted pain was the quickest way to get out of Abel's illusions. Red was already bleeding into his pupils as he looked at the younger teenager in front of him.

That blond hair and eyes just a few shades lighter than Neo's were unmistakable. The black snake coiled around the boy's neck lifted its head and hissed; a black shadow spread from it and coalesced into a giant serpent.

Neo dodged the strike.

Hail slammed into the snake's side, stunning it; it retreated, coiling protectively around Abel.

"Why the f*ck are you here?" Abel's left eye was starting to spark gold.

Neo sighed. "I'm not here to fight, idiot." He pulled out a pair of black glasses.

Abel's hand shook, but he caught them; they were rectangular shaped and sleek, made out of something lightweight and similar to plastic yet more sturdy. He, like Neo, had not forgotten about these glasses, nor who always wore them.

Neo then pulled out the heart monitor. It was still working, even a few years into the apocalypse. "I found these in an overrun base, which seems to be the first place they dragged him to."

Abel unfolded the glasses. He noticed that the lenses weren't cracked in any way, but they were dirty. He gingerly cleaned them with the edge of his shirt, deathly afraid of breaking them. "Anything else?" He had returned to watching Neo, wary. "There's no way you tracked me down just for this."

"I thought you'd be interested in rescuing your dear old dad."

Abel grabbed Neo's jacket with his free hand. "You know where he is?"

"He was transported to a research base called Krita." Neo shrugged and added, "It's up in the north-east. A few days of driving."

"Why tell me all this?" Abel leaned closer, glaring at Neo. "What are you wanting?"

"Little brother-"

"Cousin."

"Fine. Little cousin," Neo continued, ignoring Abel's growl, "The safest option is for us to break Noah out together."

Abel scrutinized Neo's expression. Surprise settled on his own face. "You're serious."

Neo smirked. "Completely." He put a hand over Abel's and tugged the boy's hand off of him. Despite the years that went by, Neo was five years older and still far bigger. Abel immediately stepped away from him and Neo let go, putting his hand back in his pocket. "So, are you in?"

XXX

They weren't travelling by car. Neither Neo nor Abel had one. However, Neo did have a motorcycle. He only had one helmet and Abel was forced to wear it.

The decrepit roads were mostly silent except for the hum of the souped up engine. The sound still drew attention.

A horde of roaming zombies crawled and ran out from the underbrush on the side. They almost surrounded the teens, but Hail intercepted the zombies and cleared a way out for the bike.

Neo continued to drive for a bit, trying to ensure they wouldn't be flanked. He turned off the engine and kicked out the stand.

Abel took off the helmet and unholstered his pistol.

This was a pack of about sixty zombies. Hail couldn't take them all down. It would be suicidal for two regular humans to attempt to handle the rest, but then, neither of them were normal.

Abel's snake wrapped around zombies and crushed them with its coils. As another undead, the snake might as well have been nonexistent for all the attention paid to it; this was not the case for Abel himself, however. The boy hit cores quickly and efficiently. A spark of gold flared up around his left eye. Behind Abel, a mutated zombie reached out for him, only to be decimated by Neo.

The air around Neo seemed to be covered by black dust as he used his ability.

"I didn't need your help," Abel growled.

Neo rolled his eyes. "You don't have eyes in your head. There's no way you would have noticed it before you got infected."

When they stopped, they argued. When they ate, they argued. When they fought, they argued, and after they argued about kill counts, kill stealing, and completely unnecessary saves.

XXX

They jumped the fence with Hail's help, the large beast acting as a portable fluffy stool.

Neo wore a wrinkled uniform jacket. He had stolen it from the ruined base's storage room.

Abel followed him with his head down. The snake around his neck was still, only curiously tasting the air by flicking its tongue out.

The two made it half-way across the yard before they were noticed.

Abel directed his snake to pull the soldiers into an illusion and Neo finished them off. They carved a path of blood from the front door to the lab wing. It was tiring, but with the element of surprise they made it happen.

There were less soldiers in the lab wing.

The footprints they left on the spotless tiles were red, showing the tread of their boots.

Neo looked through the windows of each lab. When he suspected it could be Noah, he used his earring to take the door and walked in. His pants and hand were spattered in blood.

It didn't take too long before they hit the right one.

Abel stared at Noah. "It's him," he said softly. He couldn't believe it. He had a gash on his arm that he wrapped with a sock.

Neo quickly glanced through the reports locked in the cabinets for safe keeping. He stored them in his earring, already finding some remarkably similar to his own tests. Perhaps he and Noah really had switched places, Noah might have even intentionally gotten captured to keep him out of the government's reach. Neo wouldn't put it past the sappy old man.

Abel had a hand on the glass of the capsule's door. "We shouldn't just break it, right?" He muttered, annoyed. It was frustrating to be this close and yet still having to wait.

Noah looked even more pale than usual, practically a sheet of paper. His eyes were closed, hiding the vivid blue gaze that seemed to stare into people's souls.

Neo snorted. He was looking over the panel of controls and monitors for the capsule. Among the monitors, there was one set of data that seemed to measure brain activity; one measured pulse; another measured something to do with oxygen intake. All of them were at zero. "They've been pulling him out of stasis for tests and blood, but that's it. He's been out cold for most of the past few years," he informed.

"Stasis?"

"Something like cryogenic freezing." Neo hadn't been in one for long, but then he was young, didn't have a heart condition, and was almost constantly being tested.

Abel looked at Neo skeptically, pulling his hand away from the cold glass. "Do you even know what you're doing?"

"Don't you trust me?" Neo snarked. With his mask down, only his back hid his confident smirk. He fiddled with the controls, relying on vague memories of his first time around to figure out what to do. He inserted a key he had snagged off a terrified scientist and turned it.

"Not really," Abel flatly replied.

Cold air seeped from the capsule. The sheet of glass slid back.

Abel wanted to pull Noah out, but he didn't have the strength for it; he might end up cracking the man's skull against the floor. He settled for putting a hand around Noah's icy cold wrist, thumb pressing down over a vein. He felt a pulse that fluttered to life, and started to increase in speed.

Neo pulled off the electrodes stuck to the man's chest. He snapped the heart monitor into place around Noah's neck. The teenager, of course, did not breathe out a sigh of relief when the color settled into green almost immediately. He draped his coat over Noah.

Noah's eyes fluttered open, confused but already putting together what was going on. His free hand went to his throat, feeling the familiar press of his heart monitor against his throat. He squinted at the two blobs, one with dark hair and one with blond. "Neo? Abel?" He rasped.

Abel put the glasses in Noah's hand and let go.

Noah put them on. He stared at the two teenagers for a long moment, emotions flickering across his face. "I'm glad you two are alright," he said quietly. Noah recognized them. He wasn't surprised by how they looked. But now he was remembering everything that had happened when those two looked like that. "What year after the apocalypse is this? Five or six?"

"Fifth," Abel answered.

Neo interrupted. "We need to go."

Noah sat up. He wiped his hand on the coat and then ruffled Abel's hair, giving the young teen a bright smile. "Good to see you too, Neo," he pleasantly responded. "Would you happen to have a pair of pants in your earring?"

Neo stared at Noah for a second. He pulled out a spare pair of pants. 'We really need to go before reinforcements get here,' he irritably thought.

Noah dressed himself and gingerly slipped over the edge of the pod. He stumbled, his legs unused to walking.

Neo grabbed Noah's shoulder, balancing him. "What, are you too old to walk by yourself now? Should I have brought you a cane too?"

Noah chuckled. He put a hand on Neo's shoulder to keep himself upright. "No, I'm fine. It's just. . . been a while."

Neo's expression tightened and he looked away. He didn't comment about Noah continuing to use him as support until the man regained his balance.

Abel was on point, the first line of attack against anyone who met them. With his snake, he was the perfect person for such a job. His stride was casual, but quiet.

Noah was sandwiched in the middle. He had palmed a knife from one of the dead bodies. If they were in a bad situation, he might need to fight, no matter how weak he was feeling.

Neo was the rear, keeping an eye on Noah and anyone who might try to surprise them from the back. He had his mask pulled up, almost paranoid in how he looked at the environment around them.

They turned a corner and. . .there was a military squad, a unit that had left for patrol and came back just in time to catch them on the way out.

Abel opened his mouth but was too late in issuing an order to the snake.

Bearing down on them was a hail of bullets alongside a spear of fire from a super powered soldier in the unit.

Noah slashed his arm. The blood formed into a shield, protecting the three of them from the barrage. "Stay away from them," he hissed. His blue eyes turned to ice, the emotion in then far colder than the capsule he had been locked in. Light headed, he directed his blood to attack the unit to give Neo and Abel more time.

Abel said something and his snake caught the military unit in an illusion. He kept looking back. He had his hands wrapped tightly around his gun; his knuckles were white. He was biting his lip so hard it bled.

Noah's heart monitor was in the red; he could feel it beeping incessantly against his throat. He lost control of his ability and the blood splattered onto the ground.

Neo did not charge forward to fight the military, instead he stepped in front of Noah. He reached out towards the man, not much of his face could be seen with his mask on. "Noah?" It was a questioning plea, far too desperate for someone like him, someone who's heart was roughly cut from stone, smashed, and glued together with ice. He would break if he thawed. . . or shatter with one more hit.

Noah clutched at his chest and fell backwards, catching a glimpse of Neo's lunge towards him and the teen's shocked—scared? Was that fear?—expression before the darkness engulfed him.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N
> 
> Alternate title: I talked with auroracode and came up with yet another idea
> 
> -Silver


End file.
